Leading Spanish independent Cuatrecasas has appointed seven new partners and posted a 0.3% dip in revenue to €315.3m for 2020.

The successful partners, three of whom are women, are based in the firm’s Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon offices. The tally is down by three from last year, when the firm promoted 10 partners off the back of a record year for turnover in 2019.

The Barcelona-based firm pointed out that while revenue had dipped in 2020, it nevertheless represented a 14.1% increase compared to its 2018 performance.  

Spain’s second-largest firm unveiled its results the day after the number one firm, Garrigues, posted a 1.4% increase in turnover to €386.9m, a result it said was adversely affected by the impact on its Latin America network of offices of a 'sharp' decline in exchange rates.

Both sets of results – alongside a 7.6% increase in turnover posted this week by top German independent Noerr – suggest Europe’s elite independent firms fared far better in 2020 that many feared at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The new partners at Cuatrecasas, meanwhile, hail from three specialisms. The litigation and arbitration team has seen the most appointments with three lawyers stepping up: restructuring specialists Carlos Ara (Barcelona) and Rosa Mª Gual (Madrid); and Madrid-based Manuel Franco, who focuses on international arbitration in the engineering and construction sectors.

With employment advice having been in high demand during the Covid-19 pandemic, two specialists are moving up to partner: Madrid-based Almudena Batista Jiménez and Lisbon's Rui Vaz Pereira, who is the only new partner based outside Spain.

The roster is completed by tax specialists Paz Irazusta and Moisés Oller, who are based in Madrid and Barcelona respectively.

In April last year, Cuatrecasas raised around €20m in additional capital from its partners to help it through the financial crisis. The measure, which was revealed by Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, boosted its capital reserve by 25% to €70m.